By Abdulwasiu Hassan
Nigeria's efforts to resuscitate its overburdened healthcare through a combination of steps to arrest the brain drain and bring back skilled professionals has yielded mixed results so far.
Dr Kamar Adeleke, a cardiac surgeon who left his flourishing practice in the US to return to his native Nigeria, is among the few who have answered what he describes as the call of his conscience.
"If I didn't come to Nigeria and went to the other side, God would ask me how is it that I did not help my country when it needed me?" he tells TRT Afrika of the decision to return to his roots.
Dr Adeleke recalls feeling a sense of duty to get back to Nigeria when, after a medical outreach in the country, he found out that heart disease was one of the leading causes of death among middle-class Nigerians.
He is not the only Nigerian doctor who has come back to where his "umbilical cord was buried".
A number of medical professionals like Adeleke have taken the tough call of returning at the cost of giving up the prosperity and professional success on foreign shores.
Stories of those coming back, however, drown in the debate over the continued exodus of health workers from Africa's most populous country and the continent as a whole.
Against humanity
Emigration of medical professionals from Africa, or any country in the developing world for that matter, is not a new thing.
But several countries across the continent are now increasingly worried about the trend.
From Ghana in West Africa to Zimbabwe in Southern Africa and Kenya in East Africa, authorities have been left scratching their heads in despair on how to tackle the brain drain.
In April, Zimbabwe's Vice President, Constantino Chiwenga, was quoted by media as saying his country was planning to criminalise recruitment of its doctors by other countries.
Chiwenga, who is also Zimbabwe's health minister, said such recruitment - particularly by developed Western nations - was inimical to his country that has seen a steady exodus of health professionals in recent years.
"If one deliberately recruits and makes the country suffer, that's a crime against humanity. People are dying in hospitals because there are no nurses and doctors. That must be taken seriously,” Chiwenga was reported as saying.
Back in Nigeria, a hiring company was in Abuja last year to headhunt Nigerian medical professionals for UK jobs.
The sight of scores of doctors queueing up for job interviews was almost surreal as the West African country tried to contain what is locally known as japa, or a sudden movement towards greener pastures abroad.
Return home
Although the UK later halted recruitment of doctors from developing countries like Nigeria, there is no sign yet of the exodus stopping. A bill seeking the restriction of emigration of doctors has since been introduced in the Nigerian parliament.
Amid the prominence given to stories of doctors leaving Nigeria, some are actually coming back to play a role in the country's health sector, saying the pastures abroad are not as green as they seem from afar.
But they also complain of poor equipment at home. The lack of adequate facilities might be one of the reasons why senior politicians frequently travel abroad for medical care.
Some of the medical professionals returning home contribute by way of training the next generation of doctors and sharing the experience they have acquired abroad.
No shortcut
Dr Abubakar Sa’idu, who currently works at Federal Teaching Hospital Gombe in the northeastern part of Nigeria, is one of those to have returned home with the expertise needed to shore up the country's health care.
Dr Sa’idu had worked at King Khalid University Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for five years before returning to Nigeria for him to be able to raise his children "at home and be with his parents".
“Yes, the job was very tasking, but you have the best of facilities; so, it's very exciting," he tells TRT Afrika about his experience working in Saudi Arabia.
"You practice at the highest level and have adequate facilities for research. The pay was good and the environment very conducive for living," he adds.
Late last year, the president of the Nigerian Medical Association, Uche Rowland, said over 5,600 Nigerian doctors migrated to the UK in the past eight years.
Having worked both in Nigeria and abroad, Dr Sa’idu believes there is no shortcut in filling the gap left by medical professionals exiting Nigeria.
According to the association, Nigeria has 24,000-odd registered doctors practicing in the country, and would require over 360,000 to be able to meet the WHO-recommended doctor to patient ratio.
“There is no substitute for massive production of doctors,” says Dr Sa’idu, adding “we are on course with increase in number of Colleges of Medicine and Teaching Hospitals with space for post graduate studies".
But given the time it takes to train a doctor and the fact that many of the country’s new doctors still want to leave, the trend of brain drain needs to be reversed.
Learning lessons
Dr Adeleke believes that can be achieved by providing a conducive environment in terms of infrastructure, power, security, incentives and business-friendly rules for private health facilities to thrive.
He says the country can learn from how India wooed back many of its doctors from abroad by giving them incentives to return and set up a practice in their country.
For his part, Dr Sa'idu thinks with improved facilities, Nigerian hospitals can do much better.
"The most important thing is to improve the standard of the hospitals with state-of-the-art facilities. Others include funds for research, better conditions of service, safer environment with adequate public utilities,” Dr Sa'idu advises.
In the meantime, those who have come back continue to make their mark in the country’s health sector despite the challenges.
Dr Adeleke points out that because of the strides made by his Tristate medical system, the West African College of Physicians is trying to bring its training programme for cardiothoracic surgery (open-heart surgery) back to Nigeria from Ghana.
The promise of affordable world-class medical care for Nigerians no longer seems a distant, unachievable dream.
